


Vigil

by etherati



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Crisis, Gen, M/M, Temporary Character Death, but rorschach's got to make it weird ofc, plus random latin, sort of platonic romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1380934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most important skill a masked vigilante can cultivate is how to fall and come right back up. When Nite Owl and Rorschach run into a trigger-happy gang, Nite Owl finds he's able to push that skill to the extreme--even if he has no idea how or why. AKA, the one where Dan just won't stay dead and Rorschach is Freaking Out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Penance

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for a KM prompt asking for 'Highlander-style immortality', though I didn't actually make it a crossover. No swords and shit here, just a very confused owl. I started this in 2010, so some of it's a little rusty; just now finishing it up. I SUCK.
> 
> First chapter's short; the rest should be longer. Warnings for blood, violence, and both profane and offensive language.

This is bad. It's worse than bad, far worse; 'bad' is trivializing and dismissive, a word of botched busts and the sick crawling of skin at an innocent touch and the store not having the kind of cereal he'd prefer. This isn't bad, it's _incomprehensible._

Rorschach's already whirlwinded through denial and bargaining, his throat sore from all his pleas and promises, dropping empty and unanswered to the city asphalt. Anger, too, which is how he's come to be surrounded by a ring of broken bodies, draped over themselves on the pavement grotesquely. Some are breathing still, some aren't, but he doesn't care, he doesn't _care_. He doesn't.

He only cares about one of them, cradling it against flickering streetlight and rocking back and forth the way he remembers doing as a child, when all the world seemed against him, intent on taking everything he had. Every bit of happiness snatched away, no matter how small. The blood pooling under them is already going cold and sticky where it's soaked through his pants, and he skirts the fingers of one shaking hand all around the edges of the cowl, not touching skin.

It'd happened so fast. His brain still hasn't caught up with his eyes, his fingers, is trying to pull the body up as if it were still a person, still capable of sitting up and groaning and holding it together until they could get somewhere for help; a hospital, a police station, something, anything. There has to be something he can—

There can't be _nothing,_ he has to —

Sirens in the distance. They recede; unrelated, but eventually the police will respond to reports of a fight here, to reports of gunfire. The part of Rorschach that knows what this is also knows that they cannot be found like this, bloodied and defeated. He won't allow it.

He lets that part take over, shakes out the grief and sweeps it away for later. There will be time, and he will never forgive himself if they turn this, turn Nite Owl's death—and he can almost say it now, almost hear it—into a front page spectacle, dragged ugly and bleeding through the unforgiving gears of newsprint, left to flounder in damp tatters in a thousand stinking gutters.

He shoulders the body up onto his back, and it is heavy and he is small, injured himself, soles of his shoes treacherously slippery from all the blood, but it doesn't matter.

He walks.

*

Miles later he's not entirely sure even he survived the fight; he can't feel his own body, arms and legs and back gone numb from more than just exertion. He has not wept since he was ten years old, but he has been for the last hour, a steady seeping leak that keeps time with his footfalls, with the continuous patter of blood to the ground.

His arms have locked, and he doesn't know if he ever _wants_ to let go. Ever wants to reach his destination, because if the subway tunnel's walls ache with moisture and the ceiling lamps rumble just slightly from the passing cars overhead and he can hear the faint chitter of vermin in the darkness, he will know this is no dream.

He reaches the tunnel, stops to feel, listen. It's not a dream, and he chokes up a sob under the mask, starts walking again before he can drown in it.

Coming into the bright light of the Owl's Nest feels like walking into a wall of fire, like judgment. It's overwhelming, and Rorschach feels the tension in his limbs cut out like snapped string. He tumbles them both to the ground, and it's all he can do, remembering some elusive wisp of that time before he stopped crying, to pull himself to Daniel's work desk and scrabble for an emergency candle in the drawer.

The word floats through his mind, _vigil,_ looking for something to connect to. Lying in a boneless heap, he thumbs a matchbook open and succeeds in lighting the wick on the third try, and he passes out a few minutes later holding it cradled in his hands.

If it tips over and starts a fire, then at least Daniel's secrets will be safe, and if he goes with it, well, there's a word from his childhood for that, too: _penance._

*

_ What are you trying to do, burn the place down? _

It's a voice, distant, sounding pained and a little angry but it's an impossible voice and Rorschach's brain readily supplies: _dream._ He's dreaming, and he stays submerged, knows there's a reason he doesn't want to come back to the surface. If only he could remember.

_ Christ, you're bleeding. What were you— _

Then he feels whatever's in his hands being taken away, and he struggles to recover it, because it's _important._

An audible huff of breath and a clatter, then hands are on his shoulders, quieting his thrashing. When he blinks his eyes open, there's a haggard, black-eye bruised and sweaty face hanging in front of him, drawn in concern and haloed by the intensity of fluorescent lighting, damp bloody hair stuck to its forehead in whorls, and no no no it can't be it _can't —_

Rorschach doesn't scream, but it's a very near thing.

*

 

 


	2. From the Ashes

It must have all been a dream. That's the only thing that makes sense, the only idea with enough reality-roughened edges for him to get a handhold on. He'd been the one hurt(his side aches, feels like he's been stabbed, and hadn't Daniel said he was bleeding?), had passed out, been brought here. It all makes sense.

Daniel sits back on his heels, and the front of his costume looks like a massacre.

Rorschach chokes. The terror hits him cold right in the spinal cord in the way a dream never has. Beyond Daniel, a dried mess on the concrete and the white trail of dripped candlewax. His own gloves are covered in the stuff, and he notes distantly how they're shaking.

"Rorschach?" Daniel asks, expression cautious, one blood-crusted gauntlet out in the air. "Buddy, what's—"

"I'm not crazy," Rorschach blurts out.

Daniel's face collapses inward. "Of course not, why would you think..."

Rorschach traces the trail of wax with his eyes, the careless arc of something tossed aside. He can see the stub of the candle, rolling back and forth on the uneven floor. Daniel's still talking, but it's just a buzzing, incomprehensible. Like he's in shock, and maybe he is: "You were dead."

A stunned silence. "Hey, I know we had a close call here, but we've had those before—"

" _Look at yourself_."

Daniel does, and it's got to be the first time he has because his face twists up in surprised horror. One hand lifts to his own chest, ranging over the torn, blood-soaked fabric. Presses in, experimentally, and when there's no obvious pain, looks up at Rorschach, horror now transmuted into a terrible concern. "Christ, you must be bleeding more than I thought," he says, reaching for Rorschach's coat. "Come on, let me look. Should've known, from the way you were acting, you always get weird when you're trying to hide something."

Rorschach closes his eyes, allows the hands to make contact, to start parting layers. The smell of iron is overwhelming. "It's not mine," he says, voice a tight whine.

"It has to be, you're the only one hurt—"

"Bullet holes in your costume also mine?"

The hands disappear, and when Rorschach opens his eyes again, it's to see Daniel peeling the fabric back from where it's stuck to his chest, poking a finger through one of the now-obvious dime-sized holes. There's at least a dozen of them.

He looks honestly confused, now. "I don't... They look like bullet holes, but I mean, there's no way they can be, that doesn't make any sense."

"Saw the gun go off," Rorschach says, glad of his mask, because he can close his eyes when he needs to here, can conceal the dried tracks down his cheeks. "Knew it was over before you hit the ground."

Silence.

"Dreaming now," he continues, despairing. "Obvious, really."

A hand on his shoulder; a solid presence, settling next to him. "You got us back here?"

He nods into his chest.

"Rorschach, we were miles away, how did you..." Daniel trails off, takes one wax-drizzled hand in his own, palm-up. "The candle?" he asks.

"Vigil for the dead," Rorschach chokes out, because dreams shouldn't feel this real, shouldn't have this much weight and heft. Shouldn't make him feel like he's falling through the world.

"You fell asleep," Daniel says, voice gently teasing. "Not a very good vigil."

"Am aware."

There's a peeling sound, like adhesive bandages being ripped away, and when Rorschach looks up again Daniel's stripped to the waist, the cape and cowl and bloody costume top discarded to the side. His chest is just as much a mess as his costume was, but under the blood he's working to flake away, the skin is whole, and Rorschach finds himself reaching out to touch, halts the motion halfway there.

Daniel catches his wrist. Meets his eyes unerringly through the mask, and pulls Rorschach's hand to lay palm-flat against his chest.

Warmth under it, and the rise and fall of breath, no sign of the cold stillness of this body in the street or the wet blood-pulsing wounds that had put it there, and a heartbeat so strong he can almost hear it, ringing in his ears like being trapped under drumskin—

"I don't know what's going on," Daniel says, and it's so quiet compared to the rushing in Rorschach's head. "But I'm pretty sure you're not dreaming."

Rorschach feels a small sound break out of him, and a second hand has joined the first, moving in rough circles to clear away the gore. That he would normally abhor such contact doesn't even try to connect, even when his hands drift up over the bare throat to grip Daniel tightly by the back of his neck.

"You're alive," he says, like it needs to be stated aloud to be true.

"Yeah."

"Thought you were dead." He still does, really, is waiting for reality to brittle fracture at any moment.

"I know."

"Should be."

"I don't know why I'm not," Daniel says, and the honesty in his voice stings like salt in a fresh wound, is paralyzing.

Rorschach leans in, brushes his masked cheek over Daniel's red-streaked one, ignores the stink of gunpowder and sweat and death. "Carried you, couldn't let them see—"

"Thank you. But listen." One hand settles on Rorschach's side, presses against the wet patch of his trench. It hurts, more than he expects, and it's possible some of the blood trail he left behind them for winding miles might have been his own. "You're really hurt under there, I think. I know you're confused—I am too—but we need to take care of that now, before I'm the one lighting candles, okay?"

"Dreaming anyway," Rorschach says again, and this time it sounds like a question.

"No." Daniel rocks him away, carefully peels his hands free and pushes the opened coat down his arms. "You're not."

*

He lies on his side, frighteningly exposed, while Daniel mechanically puts sutures into what turned out to be a knife wound. It's deep but hit nothing vital, Daniel says, and he looks pale and weary hovering over him, too worn to stand for long which is why they're doing this on the floor. His stitchwork isn't at its best right now, uneven and painful. Rorschach doesn't care, can't care, can barely think straight and is distracting himself by running the discarded garment through his fingers.

It'd be an unsalvageable waste even if it weren't for all the holes. This much blood doesn't wash out, has left the spandex stiff and sticky. When he turns it over, the back is soaked through too—they'd lain in a puddle of the stuff for how long?—but there are no holes.

No exit wounds. They'd gone in and—

"Daniel," he says, and he must sound urgent because Daniel's hands still immediately. "Where did the bullets go?"

"What?"

He holds up the shirt by its unmarked back. "Didn't go through. Still in there?"

"I..." Daniel trails off, then sighs and finishes, taping a bandage down and moving away, giving Rorschach room to re-dress. "I don't know, I think we're assuming they didn't go in at all? Since..."

"Makes no sense." Rorschach pulls on his shirt, his jacket. Holds the coat between his hands, wringing the fabric.

Daniel just shakes his head, putting the kit away.

And it doesn't make sense, but when they find a small pile of slugs scattered by the worst of the mess, metal dull with deformation and rust-red stains even in the basement's bright light, all either of them can do is stand for a minute and stare down.

Daniel crouches, picks one up, rolling it between bare fingertips. Daring it into existence. "I don't..."

Silence, for a long time.

"Okay," Daniel says finally, scooping them all up into his hand, setting them onto a nearby workbench with a clatter. "I can't even process this, you want to go upstairs for some coffee?"

And normally, Rorschach fights these offers— not because he doesn't want coffee or doesn't enjoy the company, but because it's who he is, what he does. But he can still feel the weight of the other man across his shoulders, dead weight, dragged and dragged and quiet, and all he can do is nod his head, too fast and too many times, and follow Daniel shakily up the stairs.

*

They sit across the kitchen table from each other. One cup of coffee's turned into two, turned into four for Daniel, and eventually into a carton of leftover Gunga curry and three bananas and an apple, two glasses of milk, whatever else he can find. It's obvious in this warmer light just how bad off he is, how sallow and wrung out, and he's eating like he's been starving for years. A blanket from the living room is draped around his shoulders, and he clutches it close in the front.

They haven't really spoken since the basement. Rorschach has his journal open in front of him, is scribbling down clues and assumptions and data and it could be any mystery he's working on if his hand weren't shaking so badly.

He's put 'gunshot wounds: fatal' in the assumptions category, but now he hovers, thinking.

"You shouldn't be doing that," Daniel says, pillowing his head on his arm. He disappeared at first, to change his clothes and wash his face, and he made a valiant effort to run some water through his hair but it's still a little sticky, curled into reddened peaks. It'd been all too easy, alone in the kitchen, for Rorschach to imagine he'd made both cups of coffee himself, was sitting here waiting for a errant hallucination that wasn't going to come back.

Now he steadies himself to the sound of Daniel's breathing, tries to ignore the way his glasses catch the kitchen light strangely, hollowing his expression. "Dwelling on it, I mean," Daniel continues. "I'm okay, you're okay, that's all that matters, right?"

His own writing stopped making sense a long time ago, is swimming in and out of itself on the page. The word _obsessive_ floats to mind, hazy.

"It helps," he says, putting down the pen and reaching for the coffee mug, only to find it empty. Contemplates getting more; he's obviously half-asleep still or he wouldn't be half so honest. "To process it this way."

Daniel threads one arm across the table, snags his wrist. "No, it doesn't," he says, face lit in lazy defiance. "I can tell. I mean, I can't even pretend to know what you went through here, but..."

Rorschach says nothing, doesn't move a muscle. After a moment, the grip slips awkwardly down to his hand.

Over the stove, the clock ticks.

"I really am okay," Daniel says, eyes sharp through the lens-glare.

"...I know." After a moment, Rorschach carefully extracts his hand. Closes the journal and gets up to carry both empty mugs to the pot of coffee for refills, studiously ignoring the pull of stitches in his side. "Still expect to wake up at any moment," he says, interrupting himself halfway through with a yawn his hands are too full to cover or stifle.

"Drink enough of that, then maybe."

Daniel's speaking from his sleeve again, muffled, and Rorschach suddenly feels like he could knock back seven more cups and not wake up; the adrenaline's worn off and they're both crashing, and his body's summarily ignoring any chemicals he throws at it. "How are we going to handle the rumors?"

"Rumors?"

Clock-check: it's 4:46 AM. "Been three hours, the entire underworld will think you're dead by now."

"News travels fast, I guess."

"Always has."

Rorschach sets the mug down in front of him, and Daniel gathers it to himself with both hands, seeming to want it more for the warmth than anything else. Whatever happened to him tonight, it seems to require a lot of maintenance.

"Perhaps we should use it," Rorschach says, and where the fine tremor in his voice came from, he doesn't know. "Element of surprise can be—"

"Changing the subject," Daniel mumbles, eyes closed over the steam.

Rorschach stands for a minute, staring down into his own mug, one hand still on the chair back. Then he's collapsing into the chair like he has no energy left in him at all, shoving the journal aside in one motion. He can feel his voice falling apart. "What is there to talk about?"

Daniel doesn't open his eyes, just leans closer over the mug. "When I thought... when I woke up, and I thought it was yours," The blood, Rorschach thinks, he's talking about the blood, and how is he even sitting here alive with so much of it caked into his uniform and onto the basement floor and along miles and miles of traitorous city streets? "I was so scared that—"

"Could see I was breathing," Rorschach says, more snappishly than he means. "Tell I was just asleep. Don't pretend it was the same."

Daniel opens his eyes, damnably serene.

"Have _no idea_ what I— what it—"

"No. I don't."

"Haven't ever watched—"

Daniel ducks his head. "I've watched people die, but it was always expected. Something I'd prepared for. I know it's not the same."

Rorschach opens his mouth, works his jaw under the rolled edge of the mask, but all of a sudden the words are gone and nothing is rising to replace them.

It really happened. It really happened and Daniel is admitting it, is—

"Thank you," Daniel says, peering up through the steam, and it makes him look fading and indistinct, makes his words sound like something out of the closing moments of a dream. "For being there, and for bringing me home."

"No," Rorschach says, quiet, because he was right, wasn't he?

Daniel's eyebrows knit in confusion. "No what?"

"Just," and Rorschach sets his forehead down on the table, is unconcerned when the fedora rolls off, settles itself an arm's length away. He's so tired, suddenly. "Don't."

 _Now is when he says goodbye_ , his exhaustion-addled brain whispers; the scenario is familiar. _Says that you were always a good friend, one last mercy before you wake up in a burn unit somewhere,_ but instead Daniel just settles his hands to either side of his head, palms warm against the roughness of his jaw, and carefully lifts his face.

It should be shameful how much the solidness of the touch warms him, how much he's always wanted it, and only now, only now—

It _is_ shameful when his own bare hands come up to rest over Daniel's, trapping them where they are, but he can't find it in himself to care.

"Don't what?" Daniel asks, perfectly serious, and Rorschach can feel the tiny pulse in his thumb where it rests too close to his mouth.

Then Rorschach moves his hands, hooks the edge of the mask and it's something like _if this were a dream you wouldn't be able to do this_ or _if it's a dream then this is how you can stay_ and he knows that's all wrong, jumbled superstitions, but it's something to do with names and faces, how much we reveal in death and in sleep and really they're the same thing—

The mask peels away like a skinning, but it doesn't hurt.

Daniel sits silently, gaping, struck dumb but there's something sparking in the back of his eyes that says he gets it, he understands. He knows what this is.

"Don't _leave_ ," Rorschach hisses, all the steel he's lost in the nakedness channeled into his voice. Maybe it's enough.

From the table, the mask stares up at both of them, still now and looking faintly betrayed.

After what feels like forever, Daniel just nods, and strokes lightly with one thumb before drawing back. "You want to stay here tonight?" he asks, even though the night's almost over. "There's the couch if you want to be up here, or even the guest room if you feel like—"

"Couch is fine," Rorschach says, scooping up the hat and the mask and his coffee mug and disappearing into the living room almost faster than the words are out, before he can regret what he's done.

*


	3. Forensics

*

The first time he wakes, it's in the soft-edged greyness of pre-dawn, shapes around him dark and hazy and drifting in and out of cohesion as his eyes try to sort out what is noise and what is signal. He feels a bit like a sleepwalker, sitting up on the couch easy and slow, one hand coming to rest on the furniture's arm.

He listens to the house.

Quiet. There is nothing of the sound of footfalls or the dulled clatter of someone moving around on the upper floors. No distant electrical hum of a light switch thrown and connected. Rorschach could be deaf except that he can hear his own breath, and it takes a moment for him to remember why he is _here_ , without his mask, sleeping in this tomb-silent house.

_Daniel._

He will not remember later exactly what he is thinking as he ghosts through the house on quiet sockfeet. He allows his mind to move over the two coffee mugs on the kitchen table (he took his with him into the living room but here it is) as he passes them, to sort the knowledge and accept it. In the otherwise empty basement, it gathers up the dark stains on concrete like the corners of a blanket, tucking them over one another against the cold (aloneness, taste of adrenaline in the back of throat, smell of fear). His clothes are stiff with dried blood and it flakes off as he moves, leaving a trail like breadcrumbs.

Upstairs, the door to Daniel's bedroom is cracked open, though it is dark beyond. Rorschach pushes it open just enough to catch the outline of a figure in the bed, limned in the same grey not-light. Lingers just long enough to watch one rise and fall of breath, then allows himself to recede, to fade back into the hallway's darkness and disappear down the stairs.

He lights another candle in the kitchen, his purpose clearer now, and sets it to burn in one of the mugs where it won't tip and catch.

The sofa welcomes his body back as if he'd never left it.

*

Later, much later, he's woken again by a hand on his shoulder. Daniel's crouching next to the couch, rousing him carefully, like he expects a punch in the mouth for his efforts, and really if it were any other day, but.

But it isn't.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows and then his hands, reaches to smooth the coat where it's bunched around him. Daniel offers his mask to him, picked up from where he'd left it on the coffee table.

When he reaches to take it, his hands are bare, and it's entirely possible for him to gather his wits enough to receive his property back without brushing his knuckles against the heel of Daniel's hand. Vital really, absolutely necessary. But he doesn't, and Daniel's hand turns against his, lengthening the contact.

Eyes regard him, speculative, from under the fringe of wet hair.

The moment can't last.

Rorschach pulls the mask back, folds it, presses it into his pocket. Stands on legs shaky from too much weight borne and still not enough sleep, and allows Daniel to herd him into the kitchen.

There's already a pot of coffee on, and Daniel's been to the basement this morning too; the handful of discarded bullets are reflecting dully in the table's surface, and one of the yellow legal pads he keeps stacks of down there is in front of a chair.

Daniel scoops up the two mugs, moves to put them in the sink—then tilts one into the light.

"Rorschach?" he asks, inspecting the melted mess. "Why did you..."

"Still died," Rorschach says, settling into his chair with none of the weight of his words. "Even if you did come back."

It's a truth they'd both skirted around last night, one that's spent all night crystallizing into a shape that can't be disputed, here in the late morning light. There's no room in their lives for comfortable lies.

Daniel hangs his mouth open soundlessly for a moment, then turns to set the mug in the windowsill instead of the sink. Above it, a delicate stained-glass bauble hangs from the curtain rod—an owl, of course, what else would it be—and its eyes seem alive, follow no matter which way it spins. An illusion.

"Well," Daniel says finally, fetching two clean mugs. He looks a lot better now than he did, color back where it belongs and the exhaustion-bruising around his eyes faded. "We don't know for sure if that's what happened, but I'm ready to try to deal with this now, if you are."

He fills the mugs, and stops on his way back to the table to extract a steak knife from one of the drawers.

Rorschach freezes in place, a seated statue. His voice is flat: "What is that for."

"Not sure yet," Daniel says, and it sounds infuriatingly like truth. He sets it down with everything else, then the mugs, and narrows his eyes at the table. "Just trying to kind of... get my thoughts in order, you know?"

Rorschach doesn't know. He's not made a habit of resurrecting himself from the dead, and is completely unfamiliar with the mental gymnastics it likely requires. That doesn't mean he's going to sit here and let Daniel do something stupid. "Put it away," he says, brooking no argument.

"Relax." Daniel sits down; the chairs are still positioned safely across from each other, but he scoots it around the table until they're nearly elbow-to-elbow. Rorschach hunches in on himself as Daniel jots yesterday's date on the top of the page. "Analysis before action, okay?"

Action. Rorschach sits stiffly, hands around his coffee, wishing he'd put the mask back on because he can feel his expression giving itself away.

Daniel is busy writing on the paper, the few things they know for sure. When he glances up, it's with a look of genuine engagement that quickly fades into confusion. "What are you— oh. _Oh._ " He puts the pen down. "No, look, I'm not going to— what, you think I'm going to stab myself or something, here?"

A shift against the chair, hands rising up the sides of the mug. His face feels hot; must be the steam. "Seemed a logical course of experimentation."

"No." Daniel barks a laugh, and it's the most _normal_ reaction to any of this that he's had. "After just barely— no, it really isn't. You know where I keep the band-aids, right?"

Rorschach nods. They're in the cabinet over the refrigerator.

"Then we'll be okay. Look," he says, and Rorschach breathes out harshly, and Daniel kindly ignores it, nudging one of the bullets with the end of his pen. "How much do you know about ballistics?"

"...knowledge is passable."

"Do you think these came from the gun you saw?"

Rorschach reaches out, picks one up. It's still crusted in blood, but even through the distortion of firing, he can tell it's a nine millimeter. "Could have. It's a very common round."

More scratching on the pad, and then Daniel pokes through them again, separating each one cleanly from the others. Some are cleaner, and Rorschach realizes with a sickening lurch of his stomach that they'd been the ones to go in after there'd been no more heartbeat to bloody them.

Then Daniel teases one particular round out, and goes stock still. The color drains out of his face in an instant.

"What?" Rorschach is finding he acutely dislikes not knowing what's going on. It hasn't happened often enough until now to pin down. " _Daniel._ "

When he picks the bullet up, it's with shaking fingers. He holds it up for Rorschach to see, and it's flatter than the others by far, more fragmented and smashed. "Compressed."

"Because it hit something hard," Daniel says, rolling it in the light. "Like bone."

Muzzleflash bright in the dark alley, and the way Nite Owl had jerked before he'd fallen, legs giving out under him—

And Daniel's paler now than he was then. "Not many dense enough bones in the upper body," he says, clinical, detached, and Rorschach already knows all of this. "Shoulderblade maybe. A thick part of the vertebra is more likely. Rorschach. Even if I could have survived this..."

"Would have been paralyzed."

A swallow past obvious dry throat. "Yeah."

Silence for a few seconds, and then the bullet hits the tabletop; Rorschach can see the change in him the second it happens, like something hot boiling up and over. 

Daniel reaches for the knife.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably got some of the ballistic technicalities wrong. I'm not a gun expert, I just like making with the dramatic h/c.


	4. Periculous mortum

*

Rorschach's hand falls on his wrist, clamping it and the blade to the table. "You said analysis first."

The clock ticks. On the legal pad: _Bullets carried home from crime scene. No entry or exit wounds or signs of internal trauma. Healed? How?_

Daniel turns to look him in the face, square-on. His eyes are bright with some unidentifiable need, beyond human instinct for food and shelter or the baser drives for physical satisfaction. He doesn't fight Rorschach's grip, but he seems willing to.

"I have to know," he says, and it's in his voice, too, that desperation.

"You can't just—"

"I promise you," Daniel says, forceful, and it disgusts Rorschach how willing he is to believe whatever comes next. "It'll be okay. I won't... it won't go deep. Just enough to tell."

Rorschach tightens his grip; isn't even sure why.

"I'm not crazy." Daniel's blood is still on those bullets, is still on Rorschach's own clothes, the smell making him want to choke. "And neither are you, and you saw what you saw. I believe you."

He closes his eyes for a moment. Fear should not override procedure, and experimentation is in Daniel's nature, an obscene urge to poke and prod incomprehensible things until he comprehends them. It's won them busts, and Rorschach knows full well that his reluctance this time is based solely on emotions run out of control. Not good.

Eyes open, and he lifts his hand away.

Daniel holds the knife up, turns it until it catches the light; then drags the serrated edge over the back of his forearm, faster than he can possibly think better of it, fast enough that he hisses in pain and drops the knife to the floor with a clatter and draws the arm in against his chest. He's swearing under his breath as a thin trail of blood starts to run from the wound, to drip to the tabletop. Deeper than he intended, or the blade was too dull.

But the stream gets no thicker. Under both of their eyes and Rorschach's white-knuckled grip (when did he move, when did he—) the skin knits cleanly back together in realtime, not even leaving a scar.

Daniel shudders, stares. Rubs the rivulet away with his thumb, leans in to the light to get a better look. "Did you..."

"Saw it, yes," and Rorschach hears an echo of Daniel's stunned voice in his own. The kitchen seems very quiet around them.

"That's never happened before."

"Aware of that, Daniel. Usually the one to—"

"No," Daniel says, voice rising in pitch, and he's still too white. Shock. "That's _never happened before_. That _doesn't_ happen."

"Does now," Rorschach says simply, sharply, with all the verbal sting of a slap to the face; his patience for this entire situation has abruptly run out. He squares his hands on the table, leans into Daniel's personal space. "Insisted on knowing, now you know. Going to face facts, or sit there stunned like vermin about to be run over by a car?"

There's something alarmingly hypocritical about the words, and it flickers there like candlefire. He ignores it.

And they seem to work anyway, snap Daniel out of it; he slumps back into the chair, reaching to rub his eyes with the bloodied hand. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry. God, this just— it changes a lot."

"Maybe."

A long moment of quiet after, and eventually Rorschach feels an unaccountable need to be in motion, to be doing something useful. He stands up in a rush, chairlegs scraping the floor, moves to replace the coffee and find Daniel something to eat. To pick up the knife and put it safely out of reach, because— because this is—

He sets a box of dry cereal and the fresh coffee on the table, forcing focus before he loses himself to the same headlight-stunned panic. "Eat something. No more experimenting until I come back."

"Sure, I guess." Daniel doesn't move, still blocking out the light, and it's not convincing.

Rorschach knows his partner well by now; knows how likely he is to want test this further, push it harder, and it is not something he will allow. He catches Daniel by both wrists, forces his attention. Tries to infuse his voice with all the fury of the street, to winnow out the fear. "No. More. Experimenting. Mean it, Daniel."

Daniel breathes out, loud, and nods. "Okay, yeah. You're right, that's probably smart. It could be a temporary thing, wouldn't want to—" His eyes track Rorschach across the kitchen. "Where are you going?"

"Mundane obligations. Not important," he says, pulling the mask from his pocket and disappearing back inside of it. "Will be back before patrol."

He's gone before Daniel can argue, and closes the stairwell door on the sound of pouring cereal. When he passes by the bloodstains in the basement on his way to the tunnel, he doesn't even blink.

*

'Mundane obligations,' god. If Dan didn't know how close to the line of abject poverty his partner habitually hovered, hadn't seen him steal sugar and cola and chocolate just to keep himself going when food money'd obviously gone to rent instead, he'd be laughing right now. Calling Rorschach back up the stairs and telling him to call in to work, and his voice would be a little hysterical but he's not afraid, Rorschach, of course not, he just needs the company.

Dan is terrified.

He eyes the knife across the kitchen, but there's really nothing he wants less than the steady heft of it in his hand. There are uses it could have, ways to use it to form and test hypotheses, but any one of them could end with Rorschach coming up the stairs tonight to find a corpse in the kitchen, one that _doesn't_ suddenly start breathing again. Something in his chest burns, and it's only halfway the harsh violence of that first breath, breaching dead lungs.

God, he remembers that—remembers an inrush of breath that hurt, badly, and not really knowing why it hurt except that it reminded him of bronchitis, that tickling urge to suck deep even knowing how bad it'll feel. A numbness subsiding to tingling pins and needles, like his entire body'd had its circulation cut off and was regaining it all at once.

Which. Makes sense, inasmuch as any of this makes sense. Then what?

Then Rorschach, passed out and bleeding (there'd been so much of it, everywhere) with a burning candle tipping out of his hands and every indication pointing to sudden-onset suicidal insanity.

Yeah, hell of a stone to throw, with blood still drying on that knife. Dan buries his face in his hands, making some helpless noise he can barely hear, just feel, a choking tightness in his throat.

This changes everything.

*

This doesn't change anything, he decides two hours later, breakfast down him and the knife put away and the basement door defiantly shut. They only know what did happen, not what will, and so the only sane course of action is to continue as always.

Dan is still restless, picking through his bookshelves for mythology, religion, superstition—history too, some of the more off-the-beaten-path accounts, written off by scholars as drunken memoirs. But he's read all of these before, cover to cover, and if there were anything here to explain this he'd know before he turned the first page. He's going through motions.

Three cups of coffee and a second meal he can't quite call lunch yet and it still hasn't hit him but it's about to, standing over the sink with a mug in his hand. From the window frame, the other mug stares back, waxy with drippings.

He died last night.

For a moment, there's nothing; no impact, no baggage, because this is not a thought any sentient being is wired up to process. Then he thinks about Rorschach, dragging his body through the streets, the madness he'd had in his eyes come morning and what it would have blossomed into unchecked. Thinks about the funeral, Hollis and maybe a few other masks and on the periphery, a rough-faced redheaded gargoyle of a man, afraid to come too close.

Thinks about the hail of bullets and the moment of impact and how easily it'd happened, how easily it could happen to either of them, and he suddenly can't breathe.

He'll clean up the shards of ceramic later; for now Dan just tries not to land in them when he slides gracelessly to the floor, back a hard curve against the cabinets. He stays there for a long time, eyes closed, counting seconds.

*

The fear is new.

He contemplates walking to the corner store for a jug of milk and is blindsided by the image of a man with a shotgun robbing the register, turning the muzzle on him as he walks in, doorchime ringing cheerfully. Considers an early lunch at the Chinese place across the street and is treated to thoughts of busy traffic, the sanctity of crosswalks ignored, pedestrians run down like so much roadkill.

Somewhere in the city, Rorschach is doing his job, whatever it is. Is it dangerous work? He's never asked; never mind that he wouldn't get an answer. Have there ever been nights when he'd almost not shown up for patrol, near-misses Dan never even knew about?

How many near-misses have there been that Dan _does_ know about?

He's going to go to the store, he decides resolutely, dumping the dustpan full of shards into the trashcan. Then the library. He won't become a shut-in over this, and it's not like he's never had a close call before. Not like hundreds of people haven't had near-death experiences and continued to function in society. Renewed lease on life, that's what he's supposed to be feeling.

He still half expects to dissolve in the sunlight when he steps outside, like all restless dreams do, break apart and scatter until there's nothing left but the vaguest memory and something that tastes like regret.

*

The store is quiet, his trip in and out of it quick and uneventful. He drops the bags back home—milk, canned coffee, sugar, some produce he always buys hopefully, knowing full well most of it will rot before he ever uses it—and heads on foot to the library, intending on using the long trip to clear his head and convince himself that no, a grown man is not afraid of crossing one street or a dozen, that death is not in fact lurking behind every clock tick.

He knows this, but he can't hold back a long, shaky sigh of relief when he reaches the stairs, climbing flanked by patience and fortitude: the lady and lord of knowledge, their cold marble eyes unjudging. Inside, he does his time in the catalogue room, long familiarity of the place settling him. Submits his requests, settles down in the reading room until they arrive.

While he's waiting, Dan fiddles with a safety pin he's found in his pocket, scraping the pointed end of it over the heel of his hand and even these scratches, shallow and nowhere near drawing blood, still knit together as he watches. It feels stranger, somehow; stranger than the bullets or his mangled costume, stranger than the knife in the kitchen. Maybe because he's out here, in the world, surrounded by presumably normal people who have to heal their cuts and scrapes over days and weeks.

Watching each scratch heal also feels, on some deep instinctual level, inevitable. He wonders how long he's been like this.

When the stack arrives and is set next to him (physiology and anatomy, occult history, historical mysteries, resurrection legends of every stripe) it's almost taller than his head. Rorschach needn't have worried. He won't have any time for experimenting, by the looks of this.

His stomach gives a disagreeable gurgle; it's only half past noon, and he's already eaten twice.

Dan sighs, and digs in.

*


	5. Incantatum

In the end, they wind up around the table again, running through a pot of coffee as the last unraveling rays of sunset spend themselves against the skyline. They're both in costume, mostly; a fresh backup for Dan, the same old blood-stiff coat as always for Rorschach. It doesn't even look like he's washed it.

They're very carefully Not Talking About it as Dan shifts his glasses, thumbs through his packet of photocopies. Not talking about the content of his research or the fresh starchedness of his costume or the pained relief he'd heard surface in Rorschach's breathing when he'd met him on the basement steps. Not talking about why Rorschach is here so early to begin with or why Nite Owl was already suited up and ready for him.

Then the sky is darker and the kitchen is abandoned to the receding daylight, and they are gone.

*

What they do—diving into the worst of the city fists-first, waltzing into the most dangerous conflicts with nothing more than a vague assurance of righteousness to back them up—strikes Dan now as absurdly dangerous, suicidality of the highest order. The very first fight they get into, it nearly paralyzes him, and there are moments he will always carry in his memory: Rorschach barreled to the ground where stomping, crushing feet wait for him, body skidding through gravel, himself too far away to help and the clarity of his partner's imminent demise shocking in the second and a half before Rorschach has righted himself and it is just a normal brawl again.

He closes his eyes, opens them, and goes on fighting.

It all blurs together for a while, adrenaline's gift to its most reckless abusers—then the last of the men lolls his head around in a boneless arc, spits on Dan's gauntlets where they're wrapped into his shirtfront. "Found a... replacement already, huh?"

Dan says nothing, but he can feel the corner of his mouth lift in a snarl.

"S'all you are, man. Fuckin' replacement, cause the fag over there can't go out without a big strong man at his side. Didn't expect him to find no one so _fast_ though," and with that the man breaks off into hysterical laughter, and it's very likely that he's concussed or he wouldn't be saying these things within earshot of—

A shadow falls across them both, looming, and the laughter trails off.

"No need," Rorschach growls, and then the man definitely is concussed, thunk of fist on skull echoing, body slumping to the ground.

*

They take a long, meandering path from there, and it's almost like Rorschach is leading them around the worst areas instead of through them. It strikes Dan all at once that he might still be shaken, too, whether he'd ever admit it or not. Maybe they should have taken a night off, but the idea of these rumors festering had made them both feel ill, had demanded addressing.

"Would you have?" Dan asks, in one of those odd moments only the night offers up, splintered off and quiet and outside of time. The flicker of a failing neon sign catches the outlines of their bodies, makes them feel transient, fading. "Found another partner, I mean."

A long, slow shudder runs through his friend's body, visible even from the corner of Dan's eye.

"No. Never."

*

"You should," Dan says a few fights and a few silent hours later, without context or explanation, but Rorschach's always been good at picking up dead threads of conversation.

"It's dangerous out here alone," he says, one hand on his goggles, and it's all he can do to keep his voice from shaking.

*

"Oh, God," the leader of the gang they interrupt mid-cocaine-deal sputters when Nite Owl's silhouette throws itself over him, horned and huge in the streetlight. The man crosses himself, what sounds like Latin tumbling from his mouth in a warbling cadence, laced with pure animal terror. 

And he's taken care of easily enough, something that sounds like _yes, give up, don't kill me_ sprinkled into an otherwise incomprehensible litany, wrists offered up to their cuffs like a supplication. They leave him, still talking nonsense, made fast to a light pole near the rest of his gang.

"The hell was all of that?" Dan asks, picking up the handset of the first payphone they come across, and the question doesn't expect an answer. He starts dialing, phone wedged between cheek and shoulder, fishing for change in his belt pouch.

Rorschach shifts from one foot to the other, uncharacteristically silent as Dan makes the call, gives the location and details, offers the usual pleasantries to the dispatcher. They always call him 'dear' and 'honey', the women at least, and it's a sore point with Rorschach how much he indulges them, dopey smile audible in his voice.

But this time: nothing. No rant, no sniping, just an uncomfortable quiet as they start to walk back to the patrol route, footfalls drumbeat-loud against it.

"Prayer to Saint Michael," Rorschach finally mumbles, as the first light of dawn makes itself known in the glittering maze of windows. "Asking for protection against devils and unnatural, wicked spirits, prowling the night." He pauses, then makes a low sound, almost like a laugh. "In the original Latin. Impressive."

"Spirits?"

"Some powerful ideas following you now, Daniel." Rorschach cants his head to one side, curiosity in the gesture. "Plan you use them to your advantage?"

"Hell," Dan says, and he's too tired to laugh but there's something buoyant there, rising. "If it makes them give themselves up that easily, why not?"

"Hhn." 

"Unnatural, though..."

Rorschach rolls his shoulders, brings his collar up around his neck without touching it. "Might be right about that. But. Doesn't matter."

"As long as I don't sprout tentacles or start speaking in dead tongues, right?"

"Nite Owl," Rorschach says, and there's a sharpness to it. "Wrong mythology."

Dan laughs, feels a little dizzy and suddenly, roaringly hungry. Whatever changes it's been through, his body still knows the schedule, and the way some things haven't changed is reassuring.

"Sorry," he says, "I just... this is still so freakish, you know? I keep wondering if maybe I'm the one dreaming."

Silence; just the quiet pad of footsteps.

"Like, they say sometimes that you can dream a lifetime in the second before you die," he says, and he's still smiling, brain and body not yet caught up with the weight of his words. "I guess if that's true, then there's no loss in dying young, but..."

Rorschach grunts, posture and body language indecipherable. "Loss to those around you."

"Well, yeah, of course." Over the skyline, the dark shape of an advertising balloon, the first twisted columns of steaming-off frost. "And I'm not dismissing that, I just mean, you don't lose the rest of your life, if you think you've lived it... hey," he says, interrupting himself, because even through the mask, Rorschach doesn't look well. "I'm sorry, I've just been kind of morbid today."

A rough nod, hat brim riding low between them. "Understandable."

Dan jerks his head in the direction of the tunnel entrance, and he knows that whenever Rorschach so much as spends ten minutes in his kitchen he never comes close to the brownstone the next night, but something still tells him to try. "Come back with me?" he asks, voice a little fragile. "For coffee, I mean. Always more where it came from?"

The city keeps brightening by the second, and as it does, they look more and more ridiculous, less invincible, just people. Dan counts to twenty-seven in his head, slow and even.

"Yes," Rorschach finally says, and like all spirits in the night, they disappear with the dawn.

*

Rorschach watches him every night from the corner of his eye, hidden always behind the mask's gaze. He goes back to the Owl's Nest for coffee and (he can begrudgingly admit) companionship, but he never speaks of the night's dangers just passed—only of how satisfying it is to have the city's blood on their knuckles, and what they will do to put more of it there tomorrow.

He doesn't think he could stomach Daniel knowing how precious he is, man or mythology or both; that the light of fear in their enemies' eyes is beautiful but so is the silhouette of a sleeping body in the three AM darkness, breathing, in and out.

*

It happens again far sooner than either of them are expecting. 

*


	6. Sacrificial Creatures

*

They're not even in a fight—just walking, pacing down an alleyway because it connects them easily from where they are to where they need to be, and something's wrong, because—

Rorschach freezes a second before Dan does, the faint scrape of clean metal against rusted out of place. It's just enough time to hone in on the man holding the knife before he lurches out of the shadows. It's not enough time to actually dodge. 

Or it shouldn't have been, if he hadn't been shoved hard from behind, rolled into a pile of refuse and left to regain his footing on his own, turn, disarm—

Daniel's already on the ground. The assailant's already disarmed, because his knife is now lodged snugly between Daniel's ribs, and his chest is still heaving roughly against it but his breathing is loud and wet and when the assassin's head hits the wall, it just about bursts like a melon.

*

"What were you thinking," Rorschach asks, hauling Daniel up into the Archimedes' hatch. He doesn't expect an answer; gets only a wet gurgle in protest. He hasn't removed the knife. He knows enough about emergency aid to not yank it out and increase the bleeding, but it's doubtful they'll get to a hospital fast enough anyway— the last two blocks seem to have taken _hours_.

He pulls the hatch shut behind them, feels the slam echo in his braincase. Drops down next to Daniel, pushes the goggles back, splays his fingers around the hilt of the knife. The angle's wrong. This isn't going to be a case of someone getting very, very lucky; his lung's been hit at bare least, and it's probably worse than that. "What were you—"

"Playing odds," Daniel manages to get out around the blood in his airway, and when their eyes meet through the mask, Daniel's are clear. 

"Stupid," Rorschach says.

"If it... if it works out, hey. You can yell at me tomorrow."

Moments from a fading dream. Smoke through his fingers. Curtains. "Daniel, _don't_."

"Not much..." A sharp cough, wet. "See you later, buddy."

The gauntlet's bloody again when it rises, seeking, into the air, and suddenly the commands screaming through Rorschach's brain— _figure out how to fly, find a hospital, stop the bleeding, beg bargain deny_ —all collide and jumble with the sound of twisting metal. 

Rorschach grabs the hand up, and holds on tight, silent, eye contact unbreaking until the chest under his hand goes still and the eyes dim, lifeless.

*

He has already borne this tragedy once, on his back and in his heart and in his shaking hands; he will not fall to pieces. He will wait, patiently. He will stay awake this time and wait and if the miraculous happens it will also be an old shock, toothless and rough. None of this should affect him.

None of this...

His hand is steady when it reaches out to grip the knife's handle; finds it slippery with blood, and he bites the inside of his cheek until the taste of his own blood overwhelms the scent of Daniel's. He pulls it free then, and it makes a long, loud noise, a sucking, and the blood is candy-red in the owlship's lights and Rorschach realizes that what he's feeling is _rage_ , simple and uncomplicated, because this was meant for him, was meant to rest between his ribs with its tip in his heart and who is Daniel to steal fate from—

"You pushed me," he says to the body stretched out in front of him, and he can't seem to keep his hands off of it, even in his anger. "I was the target, not you. You didn't have to..."

He imagines Daniel dragging _his_ dying body back to the ship, scanning the maps as he pulls the ship into the air, coming to the same realization. No hospitals close enough, and not enough time. He does not bother with false cynicism; he knows how ruined Daniel would be even if he doesn't quite understand why. 

"Selfish," he snarls through his teeth. "Easier to die than to be the one—"

Too much. Stop. Start over.

"If I'd seen him first, if I'd reacted fast enough, you wouldn't have had to—"

Still not right. His voice fails and he lets it; fingers smooth over the ruined spandex, flattening it over the wound before the blood can dry it stiff. He leaves Daniel's eyes alone, has seen enough bodies to know better, and if Daniel wants to stare at the arching ceiling of his ship, his creation, for the rest of time, Rorschach is not going to interfere.

"Stupid," he says again, but the anger's mostly gone cold, and he can feel the heat dissipating up into his touch, thickening the air and turning it sour and silent, a nightmare in all five senses. He makes two more short, sharp noises that might be words, might be something _important_ , but there's no way to be sure.

One hand on Daniel's chest and the other on his forehead, knees sore against the rough decking, Rorschach waits.

*

He waits and he talks, a mumbling cadence that's barely recognizable as language. He's not sure how long he waits.

After a while, the thought appears: he will wait for hours, for a day; will emerge into a new night with joints that've long since locked from hovering over a corpse, will seal the ship and notify the police and go onward alone. It doesn't have the biting edge of true panic—he can still see, in his mind, Daniel shaking him awake bloody and whole in the basement, Daniel's arm healing itself together under the kitchen lights—but as time goes on, it takes on a note not unlike despair.

The first time, it was just a fight gone bad. This time, it was for him.

No, not unlike despair at all.

Then, at no particularly prophetic time and with no particular ceremony, it happens—a hard spasm under his hand, and a sudden sucking gasp of air, threaded through with a scream. The exhale is just as harsh, and over the next few breaths the cry breaks up into a staccato of exhausted agony; pain too deep to feel itself properly, eyes roving the ceiling.

He's struggling to sit up before he's completely come back to himself, and Rorschach loops an arm under his back, hauls him upright. Daniel coughs, short and sharp, and his fingers go instinctively to the slice in his shirt, slipping inside the opening, pulling the fabric out and away.

"Well," he says after a minute, the words obviously painful, "that answers that, I guess."

He's sitting on his own. He's talking. That's all the assistance he needs, and Rorschach feels the low simmer of anger start to bubble over; it drives him stumblingly to his feet, propels him to the front of the ship, where the glass eyes give him a view of the street, low and ugly. Pavement bloody, sky lightening, its own wound leaking red.

From behind him: "Rorschach?"

Just the humming of the ship, for a long while.

"Stupid risk," Rorschach finally hears himself growl, but most of the anger's still inside. "Had no way to know that you'd..."

"No, I... no, I didn't."

Another long moment; then Rorschach pulls himself away from the panorama of violence. Walks quietly across the echoing floor, and crouches down next to Daniel, hand flattening over the place where the knife had been lodged. "Hurt?"

Shake of his head, hair soft and shining in the slanted light from outside. "I don't think so. It just... breathing hurts. It did the first time, too."

"Will need another uniform."

Daniel coughs, hand over his chest, and it probably started as a tickle of laughter. "Should just make a dozen at once, at this rate."

It's the wrong thing to say. Rorschach feels his face go knotted and tight against his will, twisting under the mask, and then he's across the space, busying himself with coffee neither of them needs.

Dan accepts it and the hand up anyway, and the guidance back to his seat, and sips at it in silence as he carefully navigates home.

*


	7. Ill of the Dead

*

They pause at the riverside, hovering at the last point of departure, the last place Rorschach can easily walk away to keep his own company for the morning. The question is obvious – go or stay – but that's not what comes out, when Daniel open his mouth.

Instead: "I would have done the same before. Whether I would have come back or not."

"I know."

"And I'm pretty sure you'd do the same," and Rorschach flinches because it's true, of course it's true, but that's _different_.

_It's always different,_ he hears Daniel respond in his head, chastising.

"Shouldn't be so casual about it," he says instead, and maybe he's being maddeningly vague but maybe Daniel deserves it.

"Does that bother you? Life and death being casual."

"Shouldn't be, not for..." Rorschach shoves his hands in his pockets, grunts in frustration. "Shouldn't just throw– shouldn't be for _you_."

"You're not making any sense, man." Daniel pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezes his eyes shut. "Or maybe I'm just not receiving. God, I'm starving."

"Should be some supplies under–"

Daniel waves his hand, dismissive. "Don't change the subject. So what you're saying is, it's okay for you to throw your life around, even though it'd be _permanent_ , but it's not okay for me to."

A pause, and Daniel looks up, eyes slipping open to find his, unerring, straight through the mask. "Even though it isn't. Is that what you're saying?"

Rorschach licks his lips, hopes it isn't visible through the latex. Put that way, it does sound unreasonable, but he won't be denied a motivation for his anger.

"If it worked that way," Daniel says, and he's so pale, eyes dark and bruised, “you'd be dead right now. Would that be better?"

"Nnk. Better than–"

"Better than _nothing_. There's nothing worse that could happen." A pause, as they both stop to process this, and his voice is going hoarse, throat still rough. "Anyway, I said you could yell at me tomorrow." 

"After midnight, now."

"Smartass," Daniel says, dropping the ship into neutral with a jolt that shakes the floor under them. He leans back in his seat, boneless, rubbing at his eyes. "Tomorrow. After we've slept."

"Daniel–"

"Come back with me?" 

Rorschach blinks under the mask, and looks up, finds Daniel's eyes on him soft and imploring. He could have invoked the excuse of more coffee, or the more obvious – that Rorschach will get a sooner shot at yelling at him if they're both there in the morning – and Daniel has always been fond of excuses. 

Instead, he's just asked.

"Suppose..." Rorschach clears his throat, starts over, and this time he's the coward. "Suppose someone needs to keep an eye on you."

Daniel smiles, a little sad, or maybe that's just the weariness. He nods.

*

There's always an intermediary, between the street's evil and the bare vulnerability of sleep. His dress shirt isn't torn or stained and he's washed, so there's no sign of what happened out there except for a phantom ache that he thumbs over, unconscious, in the dark.

It's a little like picking at a scab, he realizes, but without the definite boundaries, without the closure. 

He thinks of Rorschach, rushing up the stairs ahead of him, holed up in the living room before Dan had even gotten the coffee going; of the way he'd sat listening to Rorschach listening to _him_ for an hour, through three mugs of the stuff and whatever food he could find.

He thinks of a silhouette, knife-sharp against a bleeding city sky.

The covers are welcoming and he really does try to sleep, but caffeine is a wicked thing and adrenaline even worse, and that little cluster of regenerated nerves and skin keeps him picking for hours before he can calm his mind enough to drift.

Understanding is borne on the backs of strange beasts, sometimes, and sleep is the strangest creature of all.

*

Anger isn't quite the right word, Rorschach realizes somewhere around seven in the morning. He's drifting, narrow body curled on its side on the sofa, feeling like nothing but a collection of old bones. He aches, inside and out. Anger isn't right, and yelling isn't what he wants to do. He wants to leave, to disappear into a bloodstain on the floor and leave Daniel to deal with it for three hours, four, five. He wants these things to be equitable.

He knows they never will be.

It's a childish impulse anyway, and at some point in the morning, Rorschach is pulled half awake by something that sounds like an apology, that knows its own inadequateness and offers itself anyway. But he's too far under to really hear it, the couch an island of calm that he's gotten accustomed to, that he's come to need. A waystation amidst insanity.

He stays there, stubborn, clinging to sleep.

*

When he wakes up (it's almost noon, the sunlight on the floor retreated to slivers), there's a hand in his, limp with sleep and disappearing over the edge of the cushion. He's the one holding on.

He leans, tracks it down with his eyes, finds Daniel sprawled alongside the legs of the couch. The carpet is pressing into the side of his face, and he's out cold, sleeping there with one arm threaded up over the cushion. As Rorschach watches him, a steady, inscrutable gaze, Daniel's eyes open.

A long moment, too quiet. Daniel's eyes struggle to focus without his glasses.

"I'm sorry," he says, eventually. "I wasn't really-- I can't get outside of my head much, after that happens. I'm not sure why, I think it might be... I don't know, some kind of defensive-"

Rorschach just stares, and Daniel pauses, seem to realize he's rambling again. Licks his lips. "I just, I should have realized."

The mask is on the table, and though they've already broken that barrier Rorschach still wants it; craves its obfuscation, the way it puts miles of ambiguity between them. He can feel his face giving him away. "Couldn't be expected," he says, tone harsher than it deserves.

"Yeah, actually, it could. You told me last time, what you went through. So I should have known." Daniel licks his lips, eyes slipping to where Rorschach hasn't pushed his hand away. "I'm sorry."

The hand feels hot in his, like Daniel's running a fever. Rorschach feels his resolve softening, thinks maybe he hates Daniel a little because he feels himself on the verge of actually vocalizing _this hurt me_ and maybe _you are all I have_ and perhaps even _there is nothing you have to lose, compared to that_ , and he doesn't know what new magic Daniel has but it is horrible. He thinks he wants to lash out and shout and say terrible things he won't still believe tomorrow; his hands itch for violence.

Instead, he pulls his hand from Daniel's grip and sits up; steps over Daniel on his way to the kitchen. 

The basement door is open. He doesn't linger, turning up his collar and taking the steps two at a time, ignoring the noise of much clumsier feet on the stairs behind him. Every time his foot hits wood he reminds himself why he is angry(it is because Daniel endangered himself, was careless, not because Rorschach is almost Walter now and that is Daniel's fault) and when the hand falls on his arm, twines into his sleeve and pulls back, he isn't surprised.

Daniel _is_ , breath coughing out sharply, as Rorschach rounds on him. His back hits the wall before he has any chance to counter, hands like visegrips on his shoulders. 

"What," Rorschach snarls, doing his best to loom from below.

"I understand why you're upset," and Daniel's talking fast, adrenaline-sped like he thinks he's fighting the clock. He might be. "But you _have_ to understand that I didn't do anything I wouldn't have done before. I mean, god, you think a month ago I would have just... what, stood aside and let that asshole kill you? Whoops, guess I've got to get a new partner now?"

"Would have tried to disarm him, not thrown yourself on his knife!" It comes out explosively, louder than he intended, angrier and weaker all at once. Rorschach's voice was not made for shouting, so this is Walter, and he can feel his tenuous position slipping. He shakes Daniel's shoulders, jolting him against the wall, and he knows suddenly that Daniel can break this grip, is strong enough – has twisted out of a thousand similar holds, his own and the scum on the streets. Is _allowing_ himself to be held in place, here. Rorschach feels his stomach turn. "Shown _some_ self-preservation instincts," he shouts, and his voice is even worse now. "Been able to stand and _keep fighting_ instead of rolling over like a dead _dog_."

"...yeah, okay," Daniel says, after a long moment, eyes dark. "Guilty. What are you gonna do, kill me?"

Silence, for a stretch, between the heaving of breath. 

Rorschach closes his eyes, peels his hands carefully from Daniel's person, and he doesn't bother wishing for his mask this time because he can feel the flush of shame rising into his face and the ink doesn't hide that, never has. He steps back; feels suddenly, unaccountably weak.

"Here," Daniel says, one hand on his elbow, guiding him to sit on the step. Daniel settles one step higher, just far enough outside of Rorschach's personal space to feel safe. The hand migrates up to his shoulder, also safe. It feels heavy.

"You _were_ right," Daniel says, and he sounds strange, far away. "About disarming him, I mean. And I'll be careful not to be so careless in the future, okay? But I'm not ever, ever, going to let you die to save my own skin. I wouldn't have done that before and I'm not going to start now."

"Do you understand what you–" Rorschach starts, then stops. Tries again. "What I–"

"Yeah," Daniel says, turns his hand in to knead lightly at Rorschach's neck. "I do."

Rorschach hunches his shoulders up; isn't sure whether that is good or bad.

"I do wish you'd find better ways to express these things, though." Laughter, cautious. "Words would be a start."

Words are hard, sometimes. Rorschach turns his head toward the wall, away from Daniel, because words are hard and they are often betrayers, cutting with hidden edges, making him bleed rage and violence, making Walter just plain bleed. 

"Yeah," Daniel says, thumb pressing in under Rorschach's ear, calloused and clean. "I know."

*


	8. Haunting

*

It is from here, some indeterminate place between the top of the staircase and the bottom, that they begin to make their stand. It's appropriate, really. There are parts of this that ride along with coffee in the kitchen, candles in mugs and morning sun rising on them both— and there are parts of it that will always belong to the basement's blood-stained concrete.

"Rumors will be harder to fight, now," Rorschach says, leaning against the wall, because tactics are safe, are innocuous, and the wall is safe too. "Shouldn't have gone out."

"I thought we were dispelling the rumors."

Rorschach waves his hand, dismissive. Hours have passed since they came down here, and the kitchen light above is casting their shadows jagged and severe down the stairs. "Could have written off one recovery as the witnesses being faulty. Not two."

"Instead of proving that they'd made a mistake, we just proved that they didn't."

"Right."

“What if no one saw?”

An annoyed huff of breath. “Dragged you two blocks through gang territory. Only made it unmolested because they were afraid of what I would do. With just cause.”

Daniel sighs, a long, breathy exhale that lifts the sleep-mussed hair from his forehead. Rumors are ugly, sticky, persistent things, and they tend to spill their boundaries, end up in the wrong ears. "Damn it."

"Nothing to be done for it," Rorschach says, straightening. "Will have to use the idea instead of fighting it." He says it like a proclamation, because as amusing as the idea of frightening all of their targets into gibbering piles of terror and superstition and proffered wrists had been, they'd both known it for what it was at the time: a joke, with perhaps too serious a turn. 

There is no reason it has to be a joke.

"What do you suggest?" Daniel asks, more resignation than curiosity, but it will have to do.

*

The casual conversation on patrol stops, each night now a carefully choreographed production. There is no room for flippancy or comfort in the space they are creating for him. It feels like a loss, after years of carefully earned camaraderie, but it's far from the worst they've suffered.

The costume is overhauled as quickly as they can manage, and they opt for paler rather than darker, a sickly grey-tan that moonglows faintly in the uneven streetlight like a smoky wisp of memory or regret. Nite Owl digs up some theatrical paint for the exposed part of his face, spreads it so thinly it’s barely there—just enough give the skin that same opalescent shine, keep the eyes from locking onto him. The lenses of his goggles are two black pits in the phantom he's becoming, and it works better than they could have hoped.

The more cynical criminals do, of course, see right through it—sling insults, at him and at Rorschach and at their own brethren for being such idiots, that they could be so terrified by a stupid mask faking his own stupid death. It’s almost good; it keeps Rorschach from falling too far into the act, keeps him from falling head over feet into the miserable depths of being keeper of his own partner’s shade. 

Nite Owl always washes the facepaint off as soon as they get back from patrol, hunched over the shop sink in the laundry room in the basement, and Rorschach watches from a distance, watches the man emerge from the owl phantom, the strix, the tengu. The name varies, depending on what part of town they’d been patrolling that night; the terror is always the same, bloody talons in the moonlight and the paleness of churchyard stone.

The first part of his real face that Rorschach ever sees is his smile, wide and self-satisfied and always laughing a little even when he isn’t, rivulets of greasy water running over it to pool in the neckline of his costume like pale blood—

(Rorschach always looks away, then, something hot and strange blooming in his gut.)

—and then they are just Rorschach and _Daniel_ again, and it is time for coffee and conversation and all the horrible things they’ve had to stay stoic in the face of and all the hilarious things they’ve wanted all night to laugh at. They can have that here; this dawn-lit space is theirs.

Still— there are times when they are up on a rooftop, surveying their city, and the act is dropped for a few precious moments and it’s just _them_ , and Daniel is standing too close to the edge, teetering, and his laughter has too many jagged sharp edges and Rorschach wonders just how long it will be before he has to reach out and pull him back.

*

“ _Nite Owl_.” It’s a low hiss, made noisy by the darkness.

Nite Owl doesn’t immediately respond; when he does, it’s just to lift his goggled eyes, regard Rorschach with a flat, black-hole ponderousness. 

There’s never been a literal fall—Rorschach extracted that shaky promise weeks ago, that Nite Owl would treat his borrowed life with care, would not throw it away unless he had absolutely no choice, and Nite Owl has been diligent—but maybe there are worse things than a few hours’ breathless sleep on the pavement, worse sinking arcs a good man can trace out than that of a body given over to gravity.

“What?” the shadow finally asks, sounding distant, detached.

Rorschach jerks his head over his shoulder. Behind him, a woman and her child, freshly mugged and freshly rescued, jittering along the knife edge between panic and relief.

He has the distinct impression that Nite Owl is blinking at him, slow and confused, under the goggles. He wonders if his own mask is this disconcerting, to the people around him, to Daniel.

_He’s tired,_ Rorschach thinks, _hasn’t been sleeping_ , and that’s it’s own special problem, but.

But Rorschach’s tired, too— tired of having to pretend to a fury too great for the world to contain, all for the loss of his partner; his partner who is right next to him most nights, who is _here_. Most of the time, anyway.

There’s a little blood on the ground, a little on Nite Owl’s gauntlets. What’s on the ground is a little bit the mugger’s and a little bit Rorschach’s; only the mugger’s is on their fingers.

“All right,” he says, a growling resignation. He turns to face the civilians. “Police will be here soon. Nothing to worry about.”

“Are you going to hurt us too?” the little girl asks, because Rorschach has always been too frightening by himself, and who is more alone than a man who keeps company with ghosts? The girl’s mother covers her mouth, pulls her up close, but the question is on her face, too.

_Assistance would be appreciated,_ he grouses in his head. From the street, he can hear the sweep of cloth as Nite Owl rights himself, the quiet tread of his retreat.

“No,” he growls, though listening to himself, he hardly blames them. Nite Owl used to do this so effortlessly; he does not know why it is beyond him. “Just stay here, wait for the police.” Normally they would have waited with the victims, calmed them until help arrived, but Rorschach feels like he is drowning. “Shout if you need further help. Won’t be far.”

*

“I wonder what it feels like,” Nite Owl muses a few minutes later; they are on a fire escape, Rorschach crouched, Nite Owl’s legs dangling free like hanged men. A few streets over, red and blue strobes fill out the night, the occasional chirp of sirens breaking the quiet.

Rorschach ignores him. He thinks that maybe he isn’t speaking to Nite Owl at just this moment, though he couldn’t really articulate the reason. Maybe later.

“I know I used to know, but I can’t remember. To bleed like that and just keep bleeding. You know? And have to worry about whether it’ll stop.”

Rorschach took a long, shallow knife wound to the ribs three days ago, brass knuckles to the temple last week. He’d had to remind Daniel where he kept his own first aid kit. The irritation feels immature, but he lets it bubble over anyway. “Not some ancient, world-weary immortal from a bad novel,” he says. “Has only been a _month_.”

Nite Owl laughs, like this is a joke and Rorschach is in on it. “I know! But it’s like, when someone dies, and the first thing you forget is their voice. It doesn’t take very long.”

_Or maybe the sound of it just changes too much_. Maybe the dead really do live on in the minds of the living, but without a body they just change and change.

“Sun coming up soon,” Rorschach finally offers. The last car blips its sirens off and crawls away into the darkness; the victims have been taken care of. They can move on. “Should get back.”

Nite Owl laughs again, and this time it’s a little sick-sounding, desperate. It doesn’t expect Rorschach to laugh with it. He reaches up, pushes the cowl back, and the border between pale and ruddy skin isn’t as distinct as it should be. “The sun’s always coming up.”

“Happens every morning.”

“Every twenty four hours, I know.”

“Give or take.”

“Just.” Daniel presses his face into his hands, smears the greasepaint back through his hair. It makes him look grey, makes him look _old_. “Really don’t want to go to sleep.”

Rorschach regards him for a long moment; unfolds out of his crouch, and offers one gloved hand down to pull Daniel up, pull him back.

*


End file.
